How to have H1 keywords on EVERY Page but not destroy user experience for holiday rental site

[jasongmcmahon]

Hello,

You can make the H1 the simple useful page names, & use keywords in the H2 tags & page copy & image alt tags. Focus on writing for the user & then insert the keywords so that the copy reads well.

[effectdigital]

Common issue which people run into and complain about on a routine basis. The thing is, you always have priorities to decide upon as a business owner. Are you like Coca Cola with a huge brand, where people visit your site directly - your product is only associated with you and keywords / SEO is not a big concern? Then your H1s should be more weighted towards CRO (conversion-rate optimisation) and user-enticement

If on the other hand, you are not well known and you are entering into a competitive market - leave your vanity at the door. There's no point having a site that offers wonderful UX with all copy 100% on-brand, if your traffic suffers and you have no audience. First you get the traffic, then when your users become more brand-loyal you decide what other measures to take (further down the line). But the ascertainment of traffic is, at this juncture - your primary concern. Without any visitors there will be no ROI and no profitability to speak of

That being said - people can easily overdo optimisation to the point that a site looks very spammy, even to Google. At that point you won't get any traffic and if you do, people won't stick around for long

No individual web-page should serve more than 5-7 keywords, unless it's a one-page design implemented with a modern HTML5 structure (multiple H1s are actually okay in such a scenario - but still, one-page design's just aren't very good for SEO)

You take the top 2-3 keywords and insert those into your H1, the rest should be in the copy of your site. You forget that you're competing with enterprise-level businesses who will go the extra mile to customise their site layouts to work in content in clever, non-intrusive ways that aren't enabled by default on most basic sites or site-builders like Shopify or Wix (or even mid-tier custom designed websites). Every time the easy to mid-tier site production routes become more complex, those at the very top innovate further to stay ahead (that or they just coast on their colossal SEO authority / link metrics, until such a time as innovation becomes a requirement). You're in a race, you're not the only one running

You can be clever in terms of creating compact keyword optimisations. If you wanted to include "holiday home tasmania" & "tasmania holiday rentals" in the H1 of your homepage, you'd write this:

• "Holiday Homes & Holiday Rentals in Tasmania"

Without over-repeating itself, that string of text basically combines every element of both the keywords which you cited. You could probably get away with "Holiday Homes & Rentals in Tasmania", but since "holiday homes" and "holiday rentals" are both distinct search entities, I'd rather recap that info in the title

Your site and business exists because people need it and search for it. It's nice if you want to consider what you do 'chic', but unless there's data backing up that - people are specifically looking for that, your vanity is getting in the way of your success. Where you say "It seems really awkward & not in keeping with the chic, designer image I am trying to project" - what's the point of projecting an image to no one?

First get your audience. Then analyse the data, find out what they want (not what you want), then serve it to them. In a way, SEO is no different than starting a business. Think of your website as a physical outlet and Google as a road that's passing by. Look at the surrounding shops and stores, what do they say about what the community wants? How can you give that to them, whilst also standing out?

SEO is a medium for online success but it in no way offsets your business choices and / or decisions. Another thing you need to remember, competitors may not seem to have sites much better than your own. But in their time, when they were new, they were in some way revolutionary -  that's what scored them all their backlinks and audiences (which cement their ranking positions). To overtake them, you have to be BETTER, not the same. Yes it's hard, costly and the stakes are high

[Luminatrix]

Thanks effectdigital for the detailed response. Interesting that it is a common issue, but nobody out there seems to have successfully addressed it via a relevant story/article/post/etc. The closest I have found is "write for your customers not computers" but then a moment later, they will say "use your keywords in all your H1s on every page". Probably OK for a series of blogs, not great for a service or product.

Research is showing that the people who are choosing my property want something with a appealing contemporary design (chic), clean & well presented, with bespoke, thoughtful details which delight & add a touch of luxury & fun to their stay. People are picking the property because it looks beautiful online, it is in a great location & the description & amenities sound appealing. So vanity is not the motivator, highlighting the point of difference & appealing to what people want in a competitive market is working well so far with bookings. I would just like to translate this to website traffic without detracting from the so-far, thoughtfully designed & curated product.

So - my question was about keywords in H1s on EVERY page. I can see your suggestion relates to the Homepage & I get that - indeed I am reasonably happy with what I have ATM "Chic Holiday Home Tasmania". There is a lot of similar advice on the web regarding the home page. The problem occurs when optimising the other pages. Are you suggesting my H1 on every page has a version of "Holiday Homes & Holiday Rentals in Tasmania - Amenities", "Holiday Homes & Holiday Rentals in Tasmania - Guide", etc? Will this comply with Google's requirement to be relevant? Would this be construed as keyword stuffing? It seems a simple "Amenities at Three Beaches" or "Amenities with Luxury Touches" is a much more accurate reflection of the content of the page, but as you say, what is the point if no-one is going there to see it? Is there no other way to do it? Perhaps the answer is to add a blog where I can contribute interesting & useful content about the area which people do want & need which will then eventually establish backlinks to drive traffic, who when they arrive at the site, see a consistent message with what the product is all about?

Cheers & thanks for taking the time to write!

[effectdigital]

Hey Luminatrix, not a problem! What you are grappling with is potentially a divergence in what people search for online, and what your real, current customer-base wants. Remember that your opportunity audiences may be significantly different from your existing audience, which though profitable may be limited in reach / scope. I'd actually be really interested to see a link to the site so I could get a feel for it and what it's trying to be and who it's trying to serve

Following that, I could do some super top-line keyword research and maybe even allocate some keywords to web pages for you (might be handy). We run a lot of PPC at Effect so we get the 'more' accurate search volumes from Google which are rounded in tens (until they get above a certain level). If you don't spend enough on PPC, the tool gives you 'ranged' search volumes (e.g: "10 - 100 monthly searches") which are completely unusable

Really, your distinct pages should be targeting different keywords. You should not be using the same keywords across loads of pages as it can cause your SERP URL for a given keyword to 'hop' over time within Google's results (giving randomised user journeys to different people). Although the dangers of 'keyword cannibalisation' are often over-egged, issues can arise in that area and it shouldn't be 100% ignored

Partially you may be confusing the psychology of your audience with what people actually 'type' (that's what you should optimise for). Just because people are looking for chic properties, that doesn't mean that's the phrase they type into a search engine to find what they want (if they even search in that level of depth at all). Your SEO strategy does have to fit your opportunity web audience(s), SEO isn't something you force (it's something that leads the way!)

We need to get you keywords for each page, that's what we need to do. If the site is massive then focus on the core first and build out. Maybe I can use this thread to outline some of that methodology for you

[Luminatrix]

Hey thanks! I only have 10 pages. I have listed on all the major holiday rental sites & wanted my site to supplement with information I can't present on the listing sites. I would also like to use it to perhaps broaden awareness of our region of Tasmania which is a popular tourist destination, but does not seem to have a very good online presence. Perhaps it is ambitious of me to attempt to single-handedly put the Huon Valley on the map, but someone's gotta do it!

The bulk of my bookings come via Airbnb, so I am now targeting Airbnb Tasmania as my primary keyword. The bookings are going very well so far & the reviews & feedback are universally 5 star. We are in the high season ATM, so I am looking to get some groundwork done now to scaffold bookings during our winter low season - June-August. The site is 3beaches.id.au.

Cheers,

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Cherie!

Excellent discussion going on here. You're in the fortunate position of having only 10 pages to write and optimize, and I want to encourage you to simply give yourself a little more creative license in how you craft your H1 tags. Yes, it's a general best practice to include core keywords in your H1 title, but I'd encourage you not to be so very strict about exact word order. Let't take a couple of minutes to look at this together.

You have a Reviews page. Strictly speaking, you could write an H1 tag that reads:

Tasmania Holiday Rental Reviews

But that's pretty bland and doesn't convey much excitement to the human reader, who is your ultimate judge. So, what if instead of that, you wrote:

Tasmania Travelers Write Fun & Awesome Reviews of our Holiday Rental

Does this seem a bit more engaging and human to you?

You have an Amenities page. Instead of being strict in your wording, you could give it an H1 tag reading:

Which Amenities Will Matter to You Most Staying at Our Holiday Home in Tasmania?

And then go on to create the page in that vein, explaining why certain amenities are loved by particular types of guests (those who want to breakfast late, those who hate hot weather, those who love a hot tub after a hike in nature, etc.). Put yourself in the reader's shoes and try to engage their needs and desires.

Google is pretty good these days at understanding topics, so my overall advice is to honor your sense of creativity and write for the reader rather than focusing solely on keyword order, which, as you've so eloquently explained, ends up sounding robotic.

[Luminatrix]

Hi Miriam - thanks for taking the time to respond! So I don't need to be too strict with my keyword word order in my H1 to still get good results? My instincts without any SEO shackling for my reviews page is to honour the common feedback themes I am getting from my guests. So my H1 for that page is currently "Beautiful. Welcoming. Delightful Details". I will try balancing elegant text with the need to reassure people they are looking in the right place by using another keyword & making it "Beautiful. Welcoming. Delightful Airbnb Tasmania Details".

Many thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Luminatrix,

Yes, I recommend including your keywords, but not being quite so strict about order. You might enjoy this Whiteboard Friday from earlier this year: https://moz.com/blog/write-for-seo-2018

[effectdigital]

It's a very noble ambition, got to admit just looking at the pictures, Tasmania looks really cool! I'm really glad the bookings are going well as ultimately the commercial viability of a site demonstrates its true worth

So I just thought I'd do a quick crawl to see, how many pages you really do have!

Basically you're right, it's ten pages and one sitemap which doesn't seem to be working:

• https://d.pr/i/ToY8Kh.png (screenshot)

The pages are fine, it's just the sitemap XML which is 404-ing

You have a robots.txt file here:

• https://3beaches.id.au/robots.txt

It references a sitemap XML file here:

• https://3beaches.id.au/sitemap_location.xml

It seems to have some issues:

• https://d.pr/i/R32WW1.png

Love the little 404-dinosaur, but maybe a Tasmanian devil would be more suitable? :')

In any-case, looking at the 10 pages, I'd do something like this:

• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cXUvQg_pxWuqaVx3dyuYUkokAr76DUimxanx_W2SF48/edit?usp=sharing (gdoc link share)

I started a sheet here (not finished yet) showing how I lay out this kind of keyword research. I have completed the top two rows (green) for you. Maybe you can use this as a template to carry on! Only the Titles and H1s were significantly altered. The Meta Descriptions were actually cut down a bit so they won't 'cut off' on Google's SERPs

[Luminatrix]

Hey there - yep we have certainly got it going on down here. As Lonely Planet said, our gourmet's paradise is "wild & dramatic, cultured & quirky, isolated yet accessible". We have an intoxicating mix of splendid isolation with breathtaking, unspoiled scenery combined with all the mod cons provided by excellent tourist facilities, world class art galleries, festivals, music & culture along with plenty of unique wildlife & hipster cafes/restaurants serving up superb paddock to plate produce. But I am sure I don't need to sell Australia to the Brits! You know where to stay now anyway :). We will look after you if you ever get to Tassie.

(It seems this part of my reply was deleted on sending, apologies)

I have changed the sitemap to https://3beaches.id.au/sitemap.xml.

The 404 is courtesy of hosting provider Hostinger & it has been a struggle to get the 404 page I actually wanted up, but here it is - https://3beaches.id.au/whoops.

Thank you so much for the spreadsheet! I am sitting down to give it the attention it deserves as we speak. Unfortunately I can't use 'airbnb hobart tasmania' as we are about an hour out of Hobart in an entirely different region & it will probably annoy people who are looking for Hobart accom as they want the capital city & our strength is being in the country but still only an hour away from a cosmopolitan city. "best airbnb near Hobart" is accurate & I like it! Should we be using this if it doesn't rank however?

'5 star accommodation tasmania' is not quite right as we are rated 5 stars by guest feedback which is not to be confused with the official hotel star ratings system. 'airbnb east coast tasmania' at 110 search volume & 'airbnb south australia' at 210 can't be used as they refer to a vwery different area in Tassie in the case of 'east coast' & South Australia is on the mainland of Australia & very different. Your promptings have been very helpful however as I never even thought about searching for 'eggs and bacon bay' as I thought it would be way too obscure & imagine my surprise when I found that this yields a 720 result! I am also going to target 'huon valley tasmania' our region as Moz says in Australia this yields 501-850 volume. I can't see how via the Moz keyword tool to search worldwide, but will check this via the Google keyword planner which I always find ridiculously difficult to find.

So I am now targeting - airbnb tasmania, huon valley tasmania, eggs and bacon bay, best airbnb near hobart + huon valley accommodation (which according to Moz gets 51-100 monthly volume.

Thanks so much again, will be back in touch once I have finetoothed your spreadsheet! Do send your name & details if you wish via my contact page.

Cherie

Your Airbnb Tasmania must see & do guides to the best of Huon Valley Tasmania